Bring on the spaceships
After racing down a three-kilometre runway, a van carrying top airport officials rattled onto a patch of asphalt overrun with tall swaying grass, wildflowers and herbs. “Ah, smell that oregano,” Antonio Maria Vasile said. “It’s wild fennel if it’s anything,” replied his boss, Marco Franchini.
“No, it’s oregano,” Vasile grumbled as Franchini stepped out of the van and announced: “Here we are. The Space Port.”
Grottaglie, a medieval town known primarily for its handmade ceramics, is getting ready for liftoff.
In July, Italian aerospace companies signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic to take space tourists with about $250,000 to burn on suborbital flights offering vistas of the curvature of the Earth and about five minutes of minimum gravity.
Forty-six sites around the country were considered for the honour of serving as the project’s new launch pad. In May, Italy’s Transportation Ministry decided that Grottaglie, population 35,000 — with its long runway, uneventful weather and record as a test bed for remotely piloted helicopters and other unmanned aircraft — had the right stuff.
Recently, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte stood next to President Donald Trump at the White House and used the big occasion to talk about “launching, as soon as possible, new planes that, crossing the atmosphere, will be able to connect Italy and the United States in an hour and a half.”
“No one’s laughing anymore,” said Michele Emiliano, the region’s president, who has been caricatured as floating in space in an extra-large astronaut’s suit.
If all goes to plan, Virgin’s White Knight II aircraft will carry the SpaceShipTwo Unity up to about 65,000 feet, at which point the smaller ship will break off, hit the gas and shoot 100 kilmetres above sea level to the Kármán line between Earth’s atmosphere and the final frontier.
Richard Branson, Virgin’s billionaire founder, has said that 600 people are on standby to take off from the original launch pad in New Mexico next year, followed about two years later by Italy, although delays, crashes and cancellations have postponed departure for more than a decade.
Yet this region, Puglia — the birthplace of Joseph of Cupertino, the 17th-century patron saint of astronauts, for his apparent habit of levitating while in a trance state — is hopeful.
Italy has yet to pass legislation to allow suborbital travel. But co-operation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and support from the Italian government have been encouraging .